Joseph's Brothers Return

18Joseph said to them the third day, “Do this, and live, for I fear God.

19If you are honest men, then let one of your brothers be bound in your prison; but you go, carry grain for the famine of your houses.

20Bring your youngest brother to me; so will your words be verified, and you won’t die.” They did so.

21They said to one another, “We are certainly guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the distress of his soul, when he begged us, and we wouldn’t listen. Therefore this distress has come upon us.”

22Reuben answered them, saying, “Didn’t I tell you, saying, ‘Don’t sin against the child,’ and you wouldn’t listen? Therefore also, behold, his blood is required.”

23They didn’t know that Joseph understood them; for there was an interpreter between them.

24He turned himself away from them, and wept. Then he returned to them, and spoke to them, and took Simeon from among them, and bound him before their eyes.

25Then Joseph gave a command to fill their bags with grain, and to restore each man’s money into his sack, and to give them food for the way. So it was done to them.

26They loaded their donkeys with their grain, and departed from there.

27As one of them opened his sack to give his donkey food in the lodging place, he saw his money. Behold, it was in the mouth of his sack.

28He said to his brothers, “My money is restored! Behold, it is in my sack!” Their hearts failed them, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, “What is this that God has done to us?”

29They came to Jacob their father, to the land of Canaan, and told him all that had happened to them, saying,

30“The man, the lord of the land, spoke roughly with us, and took us for spies of the country.

31We said to him, ‘We are honest men. We are no spies.

32We are twelve brothers, sons of our father; one is no more, and the youngest is this day with our father in the land of Canaan.’

33The man, the lord of the land, said to us, ‘By this I will know that you are honest men: leave one of your brothers with me, and take grain for the famine of your houses, and go your way.

34Bring your youngest brother to me. Then I will know that you are not spies, but that you are honest men. So I will deliver your brother to you, and you shall trade in the land.’”

35As they emptied their sacks, behold, each man’s bundle of money was in his sack. When they and their father saw their bundles of money, they were afraid.

36Jacob, their father, said to them, “You have bereaved me of my children! Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin away. All these things are against me.”

37Reuben spoke to his father, saying, “Kill my two sons, if I don’t bring him to you. Entrust him to my care, and I will bring him to you again.”

38He said, “My son shall not go down with you; for his brother is dead, and he only is left. If harm happens to him along the way in which you go, then you will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to Sheol.”